Epic: Fortnite to be more “casual” focussed, aiming for “an entirely different audience”

Epic co-founder Tim Sweeney has said Fortnite, the recently-announced title from company’s North Carolina studio, will be centred as a “casual” experience.

“We have announced a new game Fortnite for an entirely different audience, more casual,” said Sweeney in an interview with VentureBeat on the programmer’s history in the games industry ahead of his induction into the AIAS Hall of Fame at D.I.C.E. next month.

“It appeals to a wider audience than a hardcore game like Gears of War. We are branching out, but we tie it all together with AAA production values.”

Fortnite’s birth came around after a week-long internal game jam following completion on Gears of War 3’s development, with Epic developers split into teams.

“Mike Capps [Epic president] decided at one point that we were finishing Gears of War 3 and we had a whole lot of people available. We weren’t ready to ramp up our next AAA project yet,” said Sweeney.

“So we held an internal “game jam” inside Epic. Everybody in the company who was available divided up into teams and spent a week creating prototypes. We got a bunch of different prototypes and proposals out of it, with an incredible amount of variety. Fortnite arose through that process. And it’s a really cool game to work on.”

While “not as obvious as in Gears of War,” Sweeney insisted that Fortnite is still a graphical beast.

No date, platforms or publisher have been attached to Fortnite since its VGA announcement last month.